For days now, one of the best-known hip hop rivalries of the last decade has revived and filled the conversations of fans of the genre, ending up spilling over and receiving much more widespread attention. It is the one involving the American rapper Kendrick Lamar and the Canadian Drake, two of the most famous and successful singers in the world, who have disliked each other for a long time but who in recent weeks have published several “dissing”, i.e. songs written specifically to insult each other and make fun of each other in rhyme. It is a historical practice of hip hop, still present especially among lesser-known rappers, but occasionally, as in this case, it can still involve even the most famous ones.
For years Drake and Lamar have been among the most famous rappers in the world, even though they have had very different careers: the former has always made more commercial and chart-topping music, the latter has achieved enormous public success despite making hip hop considered “high” ” and intellectual, which earned him widespread recognition from critics and, among other things, also a Pulitzer Prize in 2018. Even if rappers are used to insulting each other (“dissarsi”, in jargon) it is rather unusual, in times recent, that two people so famous are doing it, and with this intensity and this commitment.
In short, the one between Lamar and Drake has become a so-called beefa prolonged clash that two rappers engage in by releasing a series of dissing. On The Ringer Charles Holmes also wrote that «in terms of size, scale and capital» it could easily be «the last beef of this magnitude”, because “there will never be more rappers who will occupy the same cultural space as Drake or Kendrick (Lamar)”.
The rivalry between Lamar and Drake began around 2013 when, after several collaborations, the two began to insult each other in a more or less veiled way in some songs, initially with pretexts related to their respective music. From that moment on, Drake and Lamar stopped collaborating, and their rivalry continued to be followed assiduously by fans, who over time built a mythology around references, real or presumed, contained in rhymes, record covers and public statements .
In March the beef between Lamar and Drake, however, it intensified, due to a rhyme that Lamar had written for “Like That”, a song written in collaboration with the American rapper Future, in which he claimed that Drake and another rapper, J. Cole, were not at his level. A few months earlier, the two had recorded a song in which, together with Lamar, they defined themselves as the big three of the genre. In April Drake then responded with two songs, “Push Ups” and “Taylor Made Freestyle”, in which a verse sung by a synthesized voice very similar to that of Tupac, created using artificial intelligence, was inserted, a circumstance which had pushed the rapper’s heirs to sue Drake. In the second song, “Taylor Made Freestyle,” Drake invited Lamar to respond to his dissingclaiming that he delayed for fear of losing the challenge.
Lamar’s response came on April 30 with “Euphoria” (titled after the HBO series of the same name, of which Drake is one of the two executive producers), and from that moment the rivalry accelerated: three days after Lamar released another song, “6:16 in LA,” and a few hours later Drake responded with “Family Matters.” On May 4, Lamar released two more songs to provoke Drake: “Meet the Graham” and “Not Like Us.” Finally, Drake responded with “The Heart Part 6” on Sunday.
The insults between the two soon began to concern their respective private lives. For example, in “Meet the Graham” and “Euphoria” Lamar referred to Adonis, the son Drake had with French porn star Sophie Brussaux in 2017, and who was not seen in public for more than a year. In a verse of “Meet the Graham,” Lamar then referred to an alleged daughter that Drake would never talk about (“Dear child, I’m sorry your father isn’t in your world”).
Drake also made explicit reference to Lamar’s family: in a verse of “Family Matters”, one of the two songs he has released in recent days, he claims that the father of one of Lamar’s two children is actually Dave Free, who is I was one of his collaborators for years. Speaking of the emphasis on the private aspects of their lives, Holmes wrote that “as with most hip-hop controversies, we ended up where we were always destined: men using women, wives, single mothers, parents and children in ways increasingly crass and depraved to satisfy their raging egos.”
Drake and Lamar, at least in theory, wouldn’t need a beef. In fact, these feuds are usually undertaken to catalyze media attention and gain more fame, but in this case the contenders involved are two musicians who have largely achieved their goal. Drake is recognized by everyone as the best-selling rapper in the world, and he has achieved the commercial success that, in a self-celebratory genre like rap, it is perhaps the greatest satisfaction one can aspire to.
Lamar also had a unique and seemingly accomplished career, in which he managed to ennoble rap as an art form capable of conveying important messages with a sophisticated and “literary”. In the jargon of the genre one would say that he built a “legacy”, that is, an artistic legacy that will inspire rappers of future generations, establishing himself as the most influential hip hop musician of his generation.
Yet, even if they achieved the best in their respective fields, not even two rappers of enormous fame like Lamar and Drake managed to avoid insulting each other with a beef, because “every rapper ends up there”, according to Holmes. And this, in a certain sense, also has positive aspects, according to him.
Elements such as self-celebration, rhyming insults and the desire to demonstrate technical supremacy over the opponent have been part of hip hop since the birth of the genre, more or less fifty years ago, when the practice of so-called “battle”, i.e. the famous challenges in which two rappers compete with each other by offending each other in rhyme. For this reason, according to Holmes, Drake and Lamar represent «the last remaining superstars of a genre that is taking the path of rock», that is, a music that, having lost many links with its origins, has been going through a strong identity crisis for decades, and has become less and less relevant in global pop culture.
